Fichera, Hopkins win half at Cox Providence Rhode Races

Sunday

May 4, 2014 at 8:45 AM

Brown University freshman Joseph Fichera and 33-year-old Meghan Hopkins of North Providence were the top male and female finishers in the half-marathon portion of the Cox Providence Rhode Races. It is the first half-marathon victory for both runners

By Carolyn Thornton

PROVIDENCE — Meaghan Hopkins’ goal when she took the starting line for the half-marathon at Sunday’s Cox Providence Rhode Races was pretty simple. She wanted to run at least one second faster than her last outing.

Although Joseph Fichera’s training has been geared more for the 5K distance, he had been increasing his mileage over the last few weeks and thought he might be able to run a pretty good half-marathon time on Sunday morning.

Hopkins and Fichera both achieved their goals — and then some — taking top honors at the seventh annual race in downtown Providence.

Fichera, a freshman at Brown University, crossed the finish line on Exchange Terrace in 1 hour, 19 minutes and 22 seconds. A short time later, the 33-year-old Hopkins, who grew up just outside of Boston and now makes her home with her husband and young daughter in North Providence, completed the 13.1-mile race in 1:26:05.

Another 13.1 miles later, Felix Moser and Amelia Landberg were crowned the marathon champions of the race series. Moser, 29, of Cambridge, Mass., won the men’s race in 2:38:23. Landberg, 29, of Boston, was first among the women in 2:57:43.

Sunday’s half-marathon victories were a first for both Fichera and Hopkins, as was Landberg’s win in the marathon.

“I would have never thought that in my freshman year at Brown I would win the Providence half,” said the 19-year-old Fichera, who runs for the Brown Running Club and plans to spend the next four years studying astrophysics and applied math. “This is honestly incredible.”

“I told my husband I wanted to come out here and even if I did a second faster than my last race, that’s all that matters — a personal record,” said Hopkins, holding her two-year-old daughter and training partner Riley, who has accompanied her mom on all of her training runs via a baby jogger. “It doesn’t matter if I came in dead last, I wanted a personal record, and I came and I did it. So first place was a bonus.”

Fichera — a graduate of Coyle and Cassidy High School in Taunton, Mass., where he was co-Valedictorian of his class and ran cross country and track — decided to take an aggressive approach to Sunday’s race.

“I took it out pretty hard because what I wanted to do was get a nice gap lead so that I would have some leeway toward the end because I knew that I would slow down kind of significantly the last 5K,” he said after finishing more than 21/2 minutes ahead of second-place finisher Liam Sullivan, 21, of Eastchester, N.Y. “I ran about 5:31 the first mile. I ran sub six-minute pace for the first six or seven miles, and then I went just over six-minute pace for the rest.”

Although Hopkins posted an equally impressive margin of victory, finishing more than three minutes ahead of 31-year-old Jane Holewinski of Brighton, Mass., she says she never felt comfortable with her lead.

“I was never sure if someone was coming behind because it can happen,” Hopkins said. “So I just ran as if someone was behind me the whole time. It was definitely tough. The weather was harder than I thought. Coming in, the wind was crazy, but we’ve done it. We’ve been out there all winter, so I was ready for whatever was coming my way. … The group in front me was [running at] a pretty solid pace, so I just kept going and just kept looking at the mile markers. The crowd was great, so just coming up here to the finish, my mind was just like, ‘Let’s do this.’”

The winner of last year’s Holyoke Marathon Race of Champions, Moser had to decide between trying to defend his title at that race, which was also held Sunday, or to give the Cox Providence Marathon another shot. He picked Providence, and it proved to be a good decision.

“I ran a negative split, I think, which was the goal,” said Moser, a post-doctoral associate at MIT and a member of the Boston Athletic Association Running Club. “I ran Boston two weeks ago and kind of blew up around mile 17 there and didn’t have a good race at the tail end of that. But this felt fantastic at the end. … I was trying to conserve a bit of energy. I saw (eventual runner-up Christopher Klucznik) lead for like 99 percent of it, and I just had a little bit of energy left at the end and managed to catch him. But this guy ran an amazing race.”

All things considered, Klucznik was happy with his second-place finish (2:38:42), as the 31-year-old Somerville, Mass., resident had missed a chance to run the Boston Marathon because his son James Patrick was born five weeks early on the Saturday before the race.

The runner-up at the Cox Sports Marathon in 2012, Landberg wasn’t sure what she was capable of running this time, but hoped to finish in less than three hours. She far surpassed her expectations with her time of 2:57:43, finishing nearly three minutes ahead of 42-year-old Cathrine Wolden, of Pound Ridge, N.Y.

“The woman [Wolden] who led for most of it did a fabulous job,” said Landberg, a management consultant and member of the Greater Boston Track Club. “I caught up to her at (mile) 22 or something, so it was really close. … You couldn’t have asked for better weather. Great course. Well run. It was just fabulous.”

Kevin Martes (18:11) and Mary Sketch (19:24), both residents of Providence, won the 5K event.